The dirty secrets of a publicly viewed website

I was shown this link earlier today. It's only a paragraph, but just in case some of you folks are too lazy to check it out, I'll give you a summary. It seems (if the article is to be believed) the CIA is probing to discover the impact of Wikileaks. They're calling themselves the Wikileaks Task Force (WTF). An appropriate name, as "WTF"  is what I said to myself when I heard about this misappropriation of tax dollars.

I'm not saying I approve or disapprove of Wikileaks. I'd never really thought about the site at all before all this hubbub started up. Some people may take offense at my lack of a stand on this issue, but I figure that a few months after this all blows over, when most people don't even remember what Wikileaks is anymore, it won't matter what I think about it.

When you refuse to touch yourself, the terrorists win.

The guy who sent me the link followed it up by saying "Get ready for Operation LOLCAT next." That may sound like a joke, but I think there should be some serious probing done into these cats. They're up to some very suspicious behavior. For instance, why is Ceiling Cat watching me masturbate, and what government does he work for? How do we know he's not an Al Qaeda agent?

This seems like the kind of investigation that'd be right up Larry King's alley.Too bad he's retired. I mean, it's all about cats, so it's cute and cuddly, which King likes. Plus, since it's about cats, it's full of human interest, which really gets King rolling up those shirtsleeves.

There was one thing about the whole Wikileaks thing that I found amusing. I was watching a report on it on the local news. They were talking about how Paypal, Visa, et al were all refusing to send payments to the site. But I noticed that they neglected to mention the fact that every company that made such an announcement got shut down for several hours by hackers. I thought it was a strange oversight on their part, since the news loves slamming hackers almost as much as they love maligning video games and music that's not performed by corporate-controlled young white drug addicts. They really dropped the ball on that one.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Bad movies and fond memories

Back when I was a kid, there was a video rental chain (at least, I think it was a chain) called West Coast Video near my house. In one corner was a kid's section, which was partitioned off by faux castle walls and an arch that even at 10 years old I had to duck under (and I was a short kid). At the time, that seemed real cool, but looking back on it now, it seems very foolish. At the far corner from the kid's section was the Adult section, which was behind a doorway with a blind corner so you couldn't just look in. I remember being real curious about that, wondering what kind of movies were in there that I wasn't supposed to look at. I tried daring myself to go in there a couple times, but I never got up the nerve, except for standing in front of the doorway and trying to peer around. Eventually I decided it couldn't be too interesting, since my parents never went in there. Which I guess should tell me something about my parents.

Anyway, the kid's section was pretty much what you'd expect, cartoons and the like. I remember there was one movie that, like the Adult section, I kept trying to convince myself to rent, but I never did, because even as a kid I could tell that the movie would be garbage. At the time, I wasn't aware of the concept of "So Bad It's Good." Which is actually kind of funny, because there were a lot of movies I liked as a kid that could fit squarely into that trope, I was just too naive at the time to realize they were bad. I just knew they entertained me.

Some days, I kind of wish I had made myself rent that movie. In my older, more jaded years, I've come to have a greater appreciation for bad movies. MST3K played a big part in that. In fact, as I understand it, the movie was even on MST3K. I have a growing collection of films that I knew when I was buying them were going to be crap. Some of them I've even dared to watch by myself, without a gathering of friends to heckle the film with me. That's how depraved my fascination with low-budget direct-to-video genre movies has become.

Perhaps it's inaccurate to say I had no concept of So Bad It's Good. I remember that every time I went to West Coast Video, I would look at that movie and read the back cover, or sometimes just stare at the front and wonder "What were these people thinking?" Also, in some weird form of childish empathy, I felt sorry for the poor sods who made this movie, thinking it must have been a terrible embarrassment to have been in it. I even became embarrassed on their behalf even as I stared at the movie with a morbid fascination. I think my fear wasn't that the movie would be bad, because it obviously was, but that it was so bad I wouldn't be able to sit through it. Or that my mom would look at it and say "Are you crazy? We're not renting that," and I'd feel like an idiot.

It's funny, I no longer have any excuse not to watch the movie. There's nothing to stop me from finding a copy and downloading it (either the original or the MST3K version). I guess maybe now I'm just worried that there's no way it could live up to the badness I'm picturing in my head. Maybe I'll recommend it when and if I resurrect my old Beer And Bad Movie Nights.

For those of you wondering, the movie I'm talking about is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

You may have noticed a couple new buttons at the top of this page. I've added an RSS feed to this blog, so that anyone interested can be notified of updates without having to come back to this site all the time.

If any of you folks have been wondering how to do this on your own blog, it's pretty simple. From the design page of your blog, go to the "page elements" tab (it should open to that one by default), and click on one of the "add a gadget" links in the sample display. A pop-up window will appear, offering a variety of tools you can add to your blog. The one you're looking for is at the bottom of the "basics" page, and is called "subscription links." Just click on the picture of the + sign, and that's it.

If you want more information on what RSS is, follow this link.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights

Hot talk about T&A

A few years back, I watched a movie called Absolon, a typical low budget direct-to-video Sci-Fi film starring Christopher Lambert. A couple weeks ago, I was on the site tvtropes.com and discovered that they didn't have a page for Absolon, so I decided to make one. The link above is to that page.

I had commented to a few people that with the exception of Highlander, every movie that Lambert has starred in -at least the ones I've seen- have been pretty crappy. I like watching those kinds of movies personally, I get some kind of perverse pleasure out of them. But I wonder what a man who's done a few big budget major motion pictures thinks when he's handed this kind of project. I imagine that the conversation with his agent must have gone something like this:

Agent: Chris, I've got a new movie here for you. It's called Absolon.
Lambert: Oh, yeah? What is it?
Agent: Well, uh, it's uh...
Lambert: Oh, man, don't tell me it's another direct-to-video movie.
Agent: Well, yes...
Lambert: It's probably a genre film, too.
Agent: Yeah, you could say that.
Lambert: Why do you keep getting me stuff like this?
Agent: Well, I think you'll like this one.
Lambert: Why's that?
Agent: You'll get to make out with Kelly Brook in it.
Lambert: <considering> Kelly Brook? The model?
Agent: Yes.
Lambert: The British girl with the...uh... <holds hands out about a foot from chest>
Agent: Yeah, that's her.
Lambert: I'll do it.

I was thinking about that motivation today, and I remembered something I'd heard somewhere. This study was done years ago were guys were made to look at pictures of people. A laser was set up that tracked where the eye fell on the picture, making a note of locations where the eye lingered. It was noted that when looking at someone, a person will look at one eye, then the other, then the mouth. And if a guy is looking at a woman, he will look at her breasts, as well. The man explaining this said "It turns out that men actually do like to look at a woman's breasts."

I'm sorry. This is news? Who was conducting this research? Aliens? Did someone really say "I wanna know if men like to look at breasts," and then get some grant money to perform an experiment, when he could have as easily asked his male friends? Or even his female friends? I somehow doubt women were unaware of this phenomenon. It's like conducting a study to see if humans would, given the choice, prefer to breathe air or poison. You'd think common sense and life experience would be enough to give you a definitive answer.

If anyone reading this is thinking about setting up an experiment to find out if men like looking at breasts, let me save you time and money right now. Yes, we do. I do, my friends do, my male family members do. Hell, I've met gay men who have expressed a fondness for women's breasts. There. Study complete. Now go cure cancer. Don't tell me you're a sociologist and wouldn't know where to start, just go cure cancer.

On the note of looking at visible parts of the female anatomy, I'd like to find the fashion designer who decided to print words on the back of ladies' pants and drop him or her down a cliff. The very first time I saw that, the first thought to enter my mind was "Oh, great. Something else for women to yell at me for looking at." Well, ok, the second thing. The first thing I thought was "What the hell is printed on that woman's ass?" I figure it's either a case of women moving forward in their plan to drive men completely insane, or distinct myopia. They go "Oh, how cute, there's something written on the seat of these pants!" and buy them, without considering the fact that this is going to draw the attention of people who see it.

And despite what some women seem to think, men they aren't attracted to are just as literate and curious as men they are attracted to. We're also not mind-readers. I've had conversations with women on topics like this, and the consensus seems to be that it's only Ok for a man to look at a woman if that woman finds the man attractive. Well, I don't know who does and doesn't find me attractive, so it's not like I have some kind of checklist I can carry around of which women's clothing it's safe to read.

And at any rate, if you're walking around with some pithy statement stretched across the front of your shirt, and you go "What are you looking at?" to an unacceptable male, you're not fooling anybody. Those words didn't appear there by magic. You knew full well that there's something written on your shirt, and that people's eyes are going to be naturally drawn there. Don't try and act like you're the innocent here.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights